I’ve stayed away from this subject even though I’ve been thinking about it all the while.
Basically Madonna has created a stir because she ditched warner bros in favor of a management company who has offered her a preposterous amount of money for a contract that retains her service until the material girl (a dubious term for a 49 year old woman) is 59. Radiohead has also made waves by releasing their album without the use of a label as a download to fans who ‘pay what the think it is worth’. Trent Reznor is finally off Interscope as well (ask him, he’ll tell you all about it).
First off I applaud these artists for making the obvious connection that selling a million records and making 9 cents per record isn’t near as profitable as selling 100,000 records and making 5 bucks a piece on them (or whatever Radioheads’ average donation is). That much should be obvious and bands have been doing this for a LONG time.
So now there’s all this speculation that record labels will go the way of the dinosaur because artists can simply release albums directly to their fans and reap all the profits. While I totally agree with this for somebody like Radiohead, this argument ignores a pretty glaring fact, which is any of these artists mentioned have had considerable dollars invested in their success before they became profitable. Somebody had to pay for all the Radiohead videos, somebody had to put up the tour support to get NIN on tour (circa Lollapalooza) and Madonna, jesus Christ where the fuck do I begin? To say these artists are proof that you don’t need record labels assumes all the promotion, production and up-front cost of launching a band will somehow evaporate. Hell, with IK back in the day, our burn rate on the road was anywhere from $300-500 a week (gas food, fixing the van, bailing Jeremy out of jail etc etc etc) and we usually came home spending more money than we earned just to get tndso the finish line. Bands I talked to that were undertaking much larger and less-shoestring budget oriented tours than us could easily spent 250k+ in a month just in the tour expenses. I submit that unless a band has some rich uncle, you have to have some kind of label/force behind you to front that money. Now granted, I think some of the advances bands get because they happen to look a certain way or play a style of music that is REALLY hot at the time are excessive, but there’s no denying promoting a band costs money. Anybody who’s done it knows that.
And the crux of my point is that if Trent never had a label willing to put Pretty Hate Machine out there, he’d still be an electro-rock goth nerd in Indiana. If Radiohead didn’t have a label with the money to put them on tour in the US, they’d still be shuffling around in UK clubs and Madonna would still be working at a thrift store in Queens. Why? Because none of these people were independently wealthy with the means to “take it to the next level” (retarded A&R phrase).
Now you might be one of these folks who think that bands can overcome the challenges those artists had in their day because of things like Facebook and Myspace. Well I got news for you…and it’s that that ain’t news! Mp3.com was essentially the exact same thing and it even paid artists each time a song got played (well for awhile). You saw all these articles about how the mp3 revolution would change how people find music. We were part of that. I even bought some banner ads on Mp3.com and while I certainly got my music out in front of thousands more people than I would otherwise, I bet we sold maybe 150 cds that way. And people, I submit that in the 10 years since those times, there hasn’t been a SINGLE artist to serve as a proof of concept. That’s right…not a single artist has been able to elevate their exposure/status to levels on par with what major labels do for their artists using a model like Radiohead (who btw are going right back to major labels to distribute the tangible version of their record so put that in your pipe and smoke it). Until that happens, and an artist (with or without major representation) can finance their own arena level tours, produce their own videos, record and release their own albums without the advances from a label, I submit that this whole idea of labels going away is a dumb argument.
The rub to this of course is that if all the artists who actually are selling a lot of records and have surefire hits like Madonna does begin to leave the labels, this doesn’t leave the labels with any money to advance the developing artists. So in effect I believe this will make it even more difficult for bands to get ‘signed’ (the single dumbest buzzword in this whole racket). And of course, the only people who care about ‘getting signed’ are the people who have dollar signs in their eyes to begin with so there ya go I guess….the rich get richer…